Dragaera

Two temporal peculiarities (mild Orca spoiler)

Matthew Walsh walshm at ipfw.edu
Tue Aug 26 18:44:34 PDT 2003

Been doing some rereading, and I came across a couple of
time-stream-alignment problems.  Apologies if these have already been
pointed out, discussed to death, etc.

(1) In _Orca_, we have Kiera meeting briefly with Stony, then hurrying
back to the Ugly Blue Cottage, arriving late that afternoon.  There she
finds Vlad, who tells her what he's been up to.  His exploits include a
run-in with Stony, leaving him (Stony) in no condition to meet with
Kiera thereafter.  The implication, though, is that a full night has
passed between Vlad's arrival at the cottage after his adventure and his
telling the story to Kiera.

(2) In _Teckla_ or _Phoenix_, Vlad refers to 'one of Paarfi's
"histories" '.  (Scare-quotes his.)  One of?  "The Phoenix Guards" isn't
published until the year 309 in Zerika's reign, which is something like
60-70 years after the action in the Vlad books.  The implication from
the introduction to FHYA is that, previous to TPG, Paarfi had only
written one other book -- "Three Broken Strings" -- for popular
consumption.

And an entirely irrelevant observation: among the scenes that Vlad sees
in Morrolan's Window in _Issola_ is an athyra-like bird falling to
earth; did this make anyone else think of Ariel in _To Reign in Hell_?

- - Matt - -